Purpose Built Communities: Helping Local Land Developers Gentrify Low-Income Communities

Purpose Built Communities (PBC) - an Atlanta based non-profit started by a billionaire, a Wall-Street hedge fund manager, and the largest land developer from Atlanta - was recently invited to speak at the Chattanooga City Council by Mayor Ron Littlefield. Purpose Built Communities proposes to solve the challenges facing low-income communities of color by displacing all the residents, demolishing their homes and providing tax-abatements and tax-payer subsidies to private land developers for building low-density condominiums to sell at market value, with a very small number of low-income residents mixed in. Residents in Chattanooga's Westside community were promised by City Council Housing Committee Chair Sally Robinson an opportunity to speak during a recent Purpose Built Communities presentation to the Chattanooga City Council. However, at the last minute, Sally Robinson changed her mind and silenced the voices of Westside residents who arrived with legitimate concerns for the future of their community and their homes. Mayor Littlefield and Council Housing Committee Chair Sally Robinson promised to provide Westside residents with an opportunity to have their voices heard by the end of February.

February arrived and Westside residents remembered the commitment made to them by our elected representatives. Westside residents attended City Council meetings, asking when the meeting was to take place, but were met with silence and a shrug of the shoulders. Then, last week, the Mayor's office sent out a flyer to residents announcing a public meeting just six days later - but the flyer did not make it out to all the residents. In fact, not even to most of the residents. The residents living in the surrounding apartments, the hundreds living in Dogwood Manor, in Boyton, and in Golden Gateway -well they never received a single flyer from the City. The only reason that any of the residents from the community surrounding College Hill Courts heard of the meeting was because their neighbors went door-to-door to tell them and made phone calls.

The residents who were capable of attending on such short notice were met with insolence and disrespect. Rather than providing the residents with time to ask questions, they were forced to engage in a transparently bogus "visioning" process led by Regional Planning Agency employees, most of whom were either told about the meeting the day before or the day of with no preparation or explanation (according to the several that I personally talked to). After several condescending speeches, the Mayor opened the floor up for between 20 and 30 minutes of questions. The Mayor openly disrespected residents who wished not to ask questions but instead took the opportunity to make statements and share their thoughts on Purpose Built Communities, the destruction of public housing, and the Mayor's handling of the potential demolition of other people's homes without their consent. No time was given for the residents to address questions directly to Purpose Built representatives.

While the voices of Westside residents went unheard - the voices of Purpose Built Community representatives were clear. After the meeting a group of Westside residents and allies approached PBC representatives and asked them a simple question: "Why even consider the Westside? It makes no sense to contemplate displacing residents from their homes and demolishing the Westside, further reducing available housing stock, when the residents living in Harriet Tubman are being displaced and the land is available. Why is the Westside being considered when prime real estate is available at Harriet Tubman?"

The response from Purpose Built Community representatives was shocking:

Prime real estate? What is the difference between prime real estate and real estate? Harriet Tubman is real estate. It is land. This [the Westside] is prime real estate. This is where land developers want to come.

So there you have it, honest truth straight from the folks themselves. Mayor Littlefield's plans for public housing has nothing to do with what is best for the residents of our city, for low-income communities, for communities of color that have long been subjected to the whims and decisions of City Hall with no concern for their right to self-determination - this decision to bring Purpose Built Communities to Chattanooga and to the Westside has everything to with providing local land developers an opportunity to colonize land that is inhabited by over 2,000 of our city's most vulnerable folks.

Westside residents were rightfully disturbed by the meeting. No City Council representatives were there. The media arrived only after being contacted by Westside allies - and were then given incorrect locations for the meeting by the Mayor's Public Relations Director Richard Beeland. Residents were not provided adaquate time for questions and comments and the comments they made were ridiculed by the Mayor and the questions went unanswered. So Westside residents went to City Council to ask their representatives where they were and to tell them what they heard. The Chattanooga City Council was dismayed that they received no notice of the meeting and appeared as disturbed and perplexed as Westside residents at how the meeting was announced, organized and conducted. Everyone seemed dismayed by the lack of professionalism displayed by City Hall as well as by Mayor Littlefield and his administration's insincere attempt at gaining citizen input after making a public promise to meet with residents and listen to them.

News Channel 9's Jana Barnello covered the story:



I caught the entire exchange between Westside residents and the Chattanooga City Council on video:



YOU CAN HELP GET THE WORD OUT ABOUT PURPOSE BUILT COMMUNITIES AND THE ATTEMPTS BEING MADE BY CITY HALL TO DISPLACE LOW-INCOME RESIDENTS FROM THEIR COMMUNITIES AND DEMOLISH THEIR HOMES!

Get educated about the housing crises facing Chattanooga and what Westside residents are doing to address it: CLICK HERE

Educate others! Print-off and hand-out flyers made by Westside residents and their allies in Chattanooga Organized for Action to explain Purpose Built Communities and the plans for gentrifying low-income communities and communities of color through out our city: CLICK HERE

Get involved!

Westside at City Council

In Their Own Words: Activists Share Reflections on Chattanooga Recall

This coming Friday the recall of Mayor Ron Littlefield returns to the Division II Circuit Court room of Judge Jeff Hollingsworth. In the lead up to this momentous day I have taken the time to ask some of the folks who were deeply involved in the recall to share their personal thoughts and reflections on what the recall has meant and continues to mean to them:

Caara Stoney

"Working the recall was especially encouraging for me as a person living in a diverse neighborhood and believing that we all must be part of community and practical change in local government. The folks that I met began to change their feelings about social justice and personal involvement in the process within minutes of our conversations. They had seen the work that COA was doing to recall the mayor and their apathy turned toward hope and pride in being part of positive change. There are many who think that the recall was a waste of time. For me, it was a sign of change, a sign of growth and a sign of empowerment that will last in an area that many had thought a wasteland. I'm hopeful that the next elections will produce a wave of voters ready to step up for democracy. Ready to be the change that they seek." - Caara Stoney

Perrin Lance

"I've thought about it often. Why I did it. Why I took to the streets for days on end and pounded pavement and went through so much stress, so much work, so much. I've thought about it a lot and the best reason, the truest, was because I wanted to be an arm of the people. I wanted myself, my work and my actions, the very thing I woke up to do every morning to be an emodiement of the democratic experiment. I wanted people to have a chance at doing something big, more than recalling a Mayor that had failed them. I wanted to give them a chance to fundamentally change the circumstances of their lives, to give them a real say."

- Perrin Lance

Video taken at City Council Agenda Meeting on Tuesday February 7 2012

Lana Sutton

"The recall was voters asserting their right to remove Mayor Ron Littlefield. It has become a neon reminder that our elected officials don't acknowledge us as the rightful government, but as the ones who will be ruled, and the ones who will be overruled by our mayor, certain city council members, a certain judge, and elements of the city's elite, who mean to remain in power over us. They don't care if they have to trample our charter, our rights, and our will to do it. The gauntlet is down. Are we the government, or are the usurpers in high positions the government? Who gets our power, our resources, our wealth, us or them? Forget the delusion of democracy. Our mayor has. Our council has. Our county judge has. It really is us vs the ones who would exploit us for profit and personal aggrandizement. And they're winning, for now." - Lana Sutton

Video taken from City Council Meeting in 2010 after Judge Jeff Hollingsworth issued a ruling on the side of the mayor - the ruling was later overturned by the Tennessee Court of Appeals.

Brief History of Corruption in Littlefield's Administration

Our city has a long history of corruption. The recall of Mayor Ron Littlefield was a grassroots citizen-led effort to hold our government accountable. Here are some of the most notorious instances of corruption within the Ron Littlefield Administration:

The Ron Littlefield Memorial Dump
In 2007 Mayor Ron Littlefield bought a known hazardous waste dump, the old Farmers Market, for an amount approximately $650,000 more than it had been bought for three years prior. The man who originally bought the property (prior to deeding it to his children, three months before the sale to the city) is William A. Thompson. Thompson is listed in federal court documents drafted by the FBI as being the central architect of Tennessee Governor Ray Blanton's Parole for Sale public corruption scandal that was revealed in a law enforcement sting. Thompson is also well known for being a major campaign contributor, supporter and personal friend of mayor Ron Littlefield. Eugue Overstreet, the pastor who worked closely with convicted felon Sheriff Billy Long for his drug running and public corruption operations, publicly took credit for brokering the deal between Mayor Littlefield and William Thompson. At the time of the purchase by the city, the Thompsons owed just under $200,000 in back taxes to both the city and county - approximately $70,000 more than amount that William A. Thompson originally purchased the property for. Also, the property could never have been zoned for the purpose of housing the homeless, the ostensible purpose the mayor provided for the city's purchase, since the property was a former superfund site and is leeching toxic waste, a fact the mayor, according to at least one news article, was fully aware of prior to proposing the purchase.
Times Free Press Report: Homelessness Panel Sees No "Rationale" for Mayor's Proposed Services Complex
Pulse Blog: Unseen Risk at Homeless Site Actually Seen
Video: Ron Littlefield Memorial Dump
Little Chicago Watch Brief: TN Par Farm Land: Littlefield, Lollipop, Eugene Overstreet

Lobbyists that do not Lobby
Ron Littlefield paid a lobbyist group $180,000 of tax-payer money to lobby on behalf of Chattanooga, of which $90,000 went to a very close friend of and major campaign contributor to mayor Ron Littlefield. Problem is, this friend was never registered to lobby!
Times Free Press: Lobbyist for City Not Registered

Backroom Sweetheart Land Deal to Campaign Manager Dale Mabee
Candidate Littlefield campaigned against our city's long history of politicians making backroom sweetheart land deals to connected land developers. Mayor Littlefield wasted no time in writing and approving a contract to his former campaign manager, downtown land developer Dale Mabee.
Times Free Press: Walnut Hill Investment Adds 22 Luxury Condos, but Critics Question Sale of Property
Chattanoogan: Dale Mabee: Our Firm Did Not Get Any Special Favors - And Response
Photo: Dale Mabee Land Deal

Mayor Bans Reporter from City Hall for Reporting the Truth
After Michael Weber reported on the Mayor's hiring of a lobbyist that never lobbied on behalf of the city and began digging around into the Mayor's firing of Parks and Recreation Department Head Rob Healy, he was summarily banned from City Hall. On local radio stations, the Mayor went on to engage in ad hominem attacks against the Chattanooga Times Free Press reporter, making anti-semitic and anti-Yankee comments. These shameful events were picked up by national and international newswires.
Times Free Press Editorial: The Mayor's Wrongful Ban

City Attorney Paid Illegally
According to both the Internal City Auditor and the Staff Attorney of the State Comptroller’s Office, Chattanooga City Attorney Mike McMahan had been involved in the illegal siphoning of hundreds of thousands of dollars of tax-payer money to his own private firm for decades.
Times Free Press: Auditor Says City Attorney Paid Illegally
Times Free Press: City Attorney May Face Criminal Investigation
Times Free Press: Attorney Billing too "Vague," Experts Say

Mayor Attempts to Influence City Court Judge Paty
City Court Judge Sherry Paty formally requested that the Hamilton County District Attorney’s Office open an investigation into Mayor Ron Littlefield for his unconstitutional and unethical attempt to persuade her decision on a case under her direct purview. Judge Paty went so far as to describe the Mayor’s behavior as “an improper, unethical and perhaps contemptible disregard for the separation of powers between the judicial and executive branches of government.” She also went on to state that she was “not an arm or extension of the mayor’s office.”
Times Free Press: Mayor, Judge at Odds Over Pet Store Case
Chattanoogan: Judge Paty Says She Was Improperly Approached In Pet Store Case; Refers Matters to DA

Mayor Appoints Sexual Predator to Executive Position Without City Council Approval, Viciously Attacks His Victims
In 2006, Mayor Ron Littlefield hired Paul Page to a position created especially for him, called the Director of General Services. Mr. Page, who has been fired from four other municipal government and has a history of workplace sexual harassment controversies in other counties, was also known to be a friend of the Mayor’s. In 2008, two women filed complaints of sexual harassment against Paul Page. In response, the city retaliated against these women according to a finding from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Independent investigations as ordered by the City also found that Paul Page had sexually harassed multiple women. Equally as disturbing as the claims of sexual harassment is Mayor Littlefield’s silence in the face of these allegations. As the chief executive of city government, it is Mr. Littlefield’s responsibility to ensure that all employees can work in safe, harassment-free environments. Instead of protecting the victims, Mr. Littlefield instead rushed to protect the predator, Mr. Page, saying in the Times Free Press: “He’s expressed a desire to me to get out of the shooting gallery, which I can understand…”.
Times Free Press 2008: City Disciplines Page for Sexual Harassment
Chattanoogan 2008: Paul Page Suspended After Sexual Harassment Investigation
Chattanoogan: Flower Shop Owner Sues City's Paul Page
Dade County Sentinel: Chattanooga Official Accused of Sexual Harassment Has History in Dade County
Times Free Press: Paul Page Expected to Resign as Chattanooga's Director of General Services
Times Free Press: Paul Page Resigns City of Chattanooga Post Amid Allegations of Harassment
Nooga: City General Services Director Paul Page Resigns Amid Sexual Harassment Allegations

Corruption as Standard Practice in Department of Parks and Recreation
For eleven years managers of the Champions Club (a complex of tennis courts, showers, pro-shop, etc owned by the city of Chattanooga) who are employed by the City of Chattanooga, have been using city property, the city website and city employees on city time to host events from which they received "tens-of-thousands" of dollars while the city never received a dime. Parks & Recreation Department Head Larry Zehnder publicly defended this activity by saying that it was part of a contract that the auditor could find no evidence of having ever been approved by the Chattanooga City Council, having ever been signed, and officially expired ten years ago. According to the CTFP Zehnder said "he does not know why, but the signed contract has been lost prior to his arrival." City employees working on the tax-payer dime were selling the private merchandise of their city-employed bosses out of the pro-shop located on city property. Parks & Recreation Department Head Larry Zehnder said that this entire arrangement is "standard practice" and that everyone from Kinsey to Corker to Littlefield knew about the for-profit activities of city employees being financed on tax-payer monies - everyone except the City Council which seemingly knew about none of this and approved none of it.
Times Free Press: Champions Club Faces Investigation

With Fear and Favor: How the Chattanooga News Media Distorted the Recall

I was recently invited to speak before a communications class at UTC about the Recall and media framing.

In my lecture I emphasize that the recall was, fundamentally, a referendum on business as usual. The Tea Party and the Occupy Movement, as different as they are (and they are very different), are both popular movements giving expression to feelings of frustration shared by a broad spectrum of society towards a system that largely excludes us. This was the spiritual source of the recall: the popular desire for a stronger democracy; democracy being defined as participation in the process of making decisions that directly affect us.

The local media, I argue, largely misunderstood and distorted the recall of Mayor Littlefield for the following reasons:

• Journalists are cozy with political and business elites: journalists often do NOT let grassroots people speak for themselves, but rather have establishment insiders speak to them, for them, and about them. No where is this fact more glaring than in the case of the Chattanooga Times Free Press editorial board, which consistently ignored all the requests from COA to meet with them and discuss our motivations for recalling the Mayor.
• Journalists often do not wish to alienate the dominant political and business establishments because they do not wish to lose access.
• Journalists do NOT provide broad historical context to current events, so stories and reports appear in isolation and abstraction decreasing the likelihood that the general population will recognize historical patterns of behavior by dominant institutions and individuals.
• Journalists do NOT provide space for nuance and complexity, but often rely on and cater to obvious media "frames", or pre-determined narratives to make sense of individual events.

Lastly, I argue that the purpose of the bourgeois or corporate press is NOT to create informed, engaged citizens capable of taking responsibility for their communities and capable of holding dominant institutions and authorities accountable. The purpose of the corporate press is to put as many advertisers before as many consumers as possible, truth and investigative reporting takes a back seat to profits and the demands of the market.

The following is my lecture in three videos with tags about relevant topics:

Video One: my story, media framing, COA and the beginnings of the recall, popular exclusion of citizens by dominant institutions and the definition of democracy, media exclusion and the denial of a voice to the citizens by the Chattanooga Times Free Press,

Video Two: Mike Weber and media access, the myth of objectivity in the press, the Chattanooga City Attorney and questions of bias, the Ron Littlefield Memorial Dump, recall as accountability and consequences for decisions that directly affect us, organizing/citizenship and manufactured ignorance, structural change is not voting

Video Three: Our power has been taken from us, change agents and the sound barrier (giving the voiceless an opportunity to speak), Tennessee as most corrupt state in the country, newspapers protect people in power, democracy is a threat to the establishment

Chattanooga Mayor Claims Recallers Are Warped, Sinful and Condemned

The Mayor's lawsuit against the voters and the City of Chattanooga heads back to Hamilton County Circuit Court Division II this Friday. Before then I am trying to create a series of blog posts capturing some of the most memorable, sensational, and important historical moments of the last two years that have led our city to this point.

I want to begin my recall blog post series with one of the most sensational and under-reported events that took place around the time that well over 9,000 signatures had been successfully verified by the Hamilton County Election Commission: the Mayor of Chattanooga needlessly injected religion into the recall by claiming that it was orchestrated by the stewards of satan who are intent on fomenting chaos and luring our community into damnation.

In August of 2010, at the height of the Recall controversy, Mayor Ron Littlefield began an email correspondence with Chattanooga Tea Party President Mark West asking for a meeting to discuss calling off the impending recall. In the initial email the Mayor accused Mark West of having raised the "hate level in Chattanooga to 'red' and contributed to a very toxic situation among the population in this community". Additionally, Littlefield absurdly claimed that the recall of elected officials was "in violation of the laws of God and man."

To his credit, Mark West responded courteously and respectfully to the Mayor's email. Mark West expressed gratitude for the invitation to discuss the recall with the Mayor but first he wanted to take the suggestion of a sit-down discussion to some of his "personal counselors" and spend some time reflecting on the matter in prayer.

Littlefield wasted no time in his reply - or in using scripture as a weapon for bullying Mr. West. The Mayor called upon Mark West to "consider" dark and vengeful verses like those in Psalm 35:

"Let them be confounded and put to shame that seek after my soul: let them be turned back & brought to confusion that devise my hurt. Let them be as chaff before the wind: and let the angel of the Lord chase them. Let their way be dark and slippery: and let the angel of the Lord persecute them. For without cause they have hid for me their net in a pit, which without cause they have digged for my soul. Let destruction come upon him at unawares; and let his net that he hath hid catch himself: into that very destruction let him fall."

Mayor Littlefield also suggested that Mark West and his "personal counselors" take into consideration Romans 13, a selection of the Bible that has historically been used to justify everything from the divine rule of royalty to plantation state slave-owners:

"Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: that powers that are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receives to themselves damnation."

Mayor Littlefield ended his second email to Mark West with this jaw-dropping caveat: "Finally, let me respectfully suggest that you need to decide today what is more important to you: politics or Jesus."

George W. Bush could not have done better. Either you are on the side of the Mayor and Jesus Christ and the Holy Mother Mary, or you are on the side of the recall and damnation and Beezlebub.

Mark West's response is interesting - he takes the Mayor to task for saying that the recall is "fringe" since so many registered and verified voters within Chattanooga signed the petition and he repeatedly calls for the recall to not be about personalities but about political differences. In a section of his response that deserves reprinting in full, Mark West completely destroys Littlefield's attempts to use theology to defend arbitrary power and to undermine democracy by presenting his Mayoral term as something ordained from on-high:

"Finally, let me address the attempt to "spiritualize" this matter and to question the rights of ordinary citizens to exercise those powers that are granted to them legally. In consulting with several pastors, mentors and godly men (who are seasoned and grounded in the Word), we can find no basis for the statement that you have made asserting that I am "in violation of the laws of God and man. 

Based on the Chattanooga City Charter, the Recall effort is a fully legal mechanism as granted to ordinary Chattanooga citizens to respond peacefully to elected officials who in their judgment are deserving of such removal from office. So I fail to understand how the passages you have quoted (that are not in the context of a republic or democracy) have any application to this process. We have not advocated resistance, violence or any such action of rebellion but are simply following the peaceful process afforded to us by law."

The Mayor responded with what I would like to call "the nuclear option". Apparently Mark West's rejection of a sit-down discussion and his calls for civility from the Mayor and his principled stance on upholding the democratic processes afforded to the voters of Chattanooga by our own city charter touched something deep inside the Mayor, because he proceed to lose his mind. Littlefield's response begins with this pearl:

"I have reached out to you twice as a Christian brother. You obviously are so overcome with political fervor that Biblical standards have taken a back seat."

And his email ends with a quote reminiscent of Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction:

Finally ,this morning, I was given this verse through a totally unrelated channel, but no doubt intended by God for you to consider: 

"Warn a divisive person once, and then warn him a second time. After that, have nothing to do with him. You may be sure that such a man is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned" (Titus 3:10-11). 

I have asked my pastor to reach out to the leadership of your church.
Ron 

Mayor Ron Littlefield's profound sense of entitlement is literally of biblical proportions. Not only does the Mayor seem to believe that he has been ordained to be the Mayor of Chattanooga by God (and therefore this whole "voting" thing afforded to us by a recall does not really matter) but he actually sent these emails from his government email address. 


When the Recall finally went to Judge Jeff Hollingsworth's courtroom, the Mayor's wife walked around the room handing out a small sliver of paper. On it were two bible verses:

Religion was not injected into the recall by the bible-thumping Tea Party crowd. In fact, it was intentionally avoided by their leadership. Instead, the Mayor used his own beliefs and the beliefs of others in an absurd attempt to justify his tremendous sense of personal entitlement and privilege. He even went so far as to use scripture as a weapon against the people he saw as his opponents. Chattanooga, I present to you your highest elected official, Mayor Ron Littlefield.